Mr. Reed, who learned French after he was forty years old, enjoys the masterpieces of French fiction and French verse in the original. He reads and rereads Horace, or, rather, certain parts of Horace which appeal strongly to him. But his one great admiration is Balzac. "Yes, I like to read Balzac," Mr. Reed often says. "His closeness to nature and life hold you in spite of yourself. There is hardly a book of his which is not sad beyond tears. 'Eugenie Grandet' is a most powerful delineation of the absorbing grasp which love of money has on a strong man, and the power which love has over an untutored spirit, but sadness permeates everything. That wonderful love story of the 'Duchess de Langais' is like no other love story ever written. Could anything be more sad than her life at the convent, and her lover's long search for her hiding-place? unless it be that lover's discovery, when he scaled the convent walls, that death had been stronger than love, and that, after a life of wasted devotion, nothing could be said of her beautiful form as it sank into the ocean except the mournful words, 'She was a woman; now she is nothing.' And what an extraordinary picture that is in the 'Peau de Chagrin' of the controlling power of society over a fashionable woman! And again, in 'Pere Goriot.' How sad they all are, and the sadness of a life that toils not nor spins! Verily, to be happy we must take no note of the flying hours, and live outside of ourselves. Is not the condition of joyous life to forget that we are living? Here most of the characters are so entirely selfish that one sometimes thinks there is not one single friendly heart in the entire story. All are so conscious of living--even those in the higher sphere--and so anxious to appear other than they are, that their entire lives are only ignoble struggles, with nothing of serene repose. When the strife is not for gold or position it is for love, which is thus degraded!" I was talking the other day to that brilliant orator, Benjamin Butterworth, of Ohio, and the conversation turned to Tom Reed, as Butterworth affectionately called him. Said Butterworth: "The way Reed's constituents have stood by him is one of the most gratifying things to me in American politics. During one of his campaigns, in which I spoke for him, I met some Democrats in his district. I said, 'Gentlemen, I do not know anything about your politics, but you have a man of sterling qualities to represent you.' 'Yes,' they replied, 'he is an intense Republican and has peculiarities, but we like him because he represents the best thought of the district, and we vote for him on the sly.'"